LIFE'S EARLY LESSONS

by Mike Robinson

I believe it was Robert Faughum who once wrote an article called, "All I Ever Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten" in which he said,

"These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours.

Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush! Warm biscuits and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn to think, draw, paint, sing and dance.

Play and work a little every day. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands and stick together".

I really can't remember much about kindergarten but most of the above seems to ring a bell somewhere in my memory. How about you?

Yet somehow life seems to get increasingly complicated the further we travel along its path. If only it could be as simple as it was in kindergarten when, in our innocence, we lived in the simplicity of life.

It seems we have this innate ability to take the simple things of life and turn them into something that we adults call "sophisticated" when, in fact, they may be nothing more than "complicated"...unnecessarily.

There's a world of difference between "childish" and "childlike". To be childish suggests to me a level of immaturity unbecoming an adult. But to be childlike suggests a simplicity and faith that remains alive and fresh despite life's rat race and distorted values.

Jesus Christ once talked about adults not being able to enter the Kingdom of God unless they became like little children. That is not a call for immaturity in outlook and behaviour. But it is an acknowledgment that, for all our sophistication, and technological advance, childlike faith, trust and dependence is still the only way to come to God and daily live in His presence.